Greetings from Philadelphia! I am pleased to tell you that my book, Against Time: Letters from Nazi Germany, 1938-1939, will be issued in a German edition this summer. The German title is Deutsche auf der Flucht, ein Briefwechsel zwischen Deutschland und Amerika von 1938 bis 1939, (“Germans Fleeing: An Exchange of Letters Between Germany and America from 1938 to 1939”). I am honored that the costs of publication are being supported by the German Resistance Memorial Foundation in Berlin. During the last year I have been occupied with the preparation of the German edition, which involved translating my notes and comments from English to German and re-editing all of the original German letters written by my parents. I am grateful to the American and German colleagues and friends who have supported my research into my family’s history over the last several years. I will, of course, let everyone know when a definite publication date has been set.

The English edition remains available from the publisher and on Amazon. For further information about that book, click here.

Best wishes,

Frank

English edition: Against Time: Letters from Nazi Germany, 1938-1939, by Francis W. Hoeber. Published by the American Philosophical Society Press, September 2015.

Seeburg Student Center, University of Kiel, where Nazi students prevented the lecture of Prof. Walther Schücking , May 26, 1930.

The following account is based on documents I recently received from the Schleswig-Holstein State Archives in Schleswig, Germany. I am indebted to my friend, archivist Dagmar Bickelmann, who has been endlessly helpful in locating records relating to my grandfather’s time at the University of Kiel.

My grandfather, Rudolf Höber (1873-1953), was elected Rektor (Chancellor) by the faculty of the University of Kiel in March 1930. Shortly after his installation, the university community was shaken when the local chapter of the National Socialist German Student Association forcibly disrupted a lecture by the distinguished professor of international law, Walther Schücking (1875-1935).

Schücking had served in 1918 as a German delegate to the Versailles peace conference that ended World War I. Thereafter, he became a strong advocate for the League of Nations, the international organization dedicated to ending war, and spoke often on the struggle for world peace. On Monday, May 26, 1930 he was scheduled to speak in the ceremonial hall of the Seeburg, the student center on Kiel Harbor. His lecture was entitled “The Moral Idea of the League of Nations.” The Nazis opposed the League of Nations, just as they opposed “pacifism.” They claimed that ending war and supporting the League would cause Germany to live for decades under the onerous terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which they believed could be reversed only by a new war.

Prof. Schücking’s lecture meeting was chaired by a distinguished panel of academics and jurists. The Nazis packed the hall early, making it difficult for anyone else to find a seat. When Schücking began to speak, the Nazis interrupted his presentation, shouting insults and catcalls. His discussion of the accomplishments of the League of Nations was derided by the audience and met with raucous laughter. As Schücking continued his lecture, the disruptions got louder. During a discussion that followed Prof. Schücking’s talk, a Nazi party member, Schalow, screamed that the League was a fraud and that leaders who preached the “emasculating” doctrine of pacifism were cowards. He claimed that the presiding panel was nothing but a bunch of Jews. The panelists intervened vigorously in the debate. A jurist condemned the “murderous activities of the SA,” the Sturmabteilung or Nazi Stormtroopers who often physically assaulted their opponents. Nazis screamed that one of the panelists was a member of the Reichsbanner, a pro-democracy militia of the Social Democratic party. When it became apparent that the most disruptive speaker, Schalow, was a student, one of the professors threatened to bring him before the university disciplinary tribunal for violation of the university’s code of behavior. This temporarily brought the meeting back under control.

Near the end of his talk, Prof. Schücking spoke critically of the political ineptness and rudeness of German political fanatics. The Nazis showed their displeasure by stamping their feet so loudly that the meeting had to be brought to a close. Triumphant at having prevented Prof Schücking from finishing his lecture, the Nazi students launched into a chorus of the Horst Wessel Lied, an anthem of the Nazi Party. They finished the evening by standing, giving the Nazi salute, and shouting “Heil Hitler!” in unison. In response, someone in the audience, possibly another professor, shouted “Pfui!,” in those days roughly the equivalent of yelling “Disgusting!” Someone else in the audience – according to the Nazis, an angry “German worker,” not a student – responded by punching that person in the face. The meeting thus came to a tumultuous end.

As it happened, the Nazi student group had reserved the same room in the Seeburg student center for a meeting of their own two days later, on Wednesday, May 28. On the afternoon of the scheduled Nazi meeting, however, a notice was posted from Rektor Höber that read, “Because of the events on Monday evening … we hereby withdraw the permission previously granted for the use of the large hall for a National Socialist meeting.”

Rudolf Höber, Professor of Physiology and Rektor of the University of Kiel, around the time he banned the Nazi party from the University because of its disruption of free speech.

The president of the National Socialist Student Association, a student named Münske, went to the office the Rektor, who agreed to meet with him. Rektor Höber, however, refused to allow the Nazi meeting, in order to ensure there was no repetition of the violence of March 26. In a letter to Rektor Höber three days later, Münske renewed his claim that the Nazis should not be held responsible for disrupting Prof. Schücking’s lecture and should not be excluded from use of the hall in the future. Rektor Höber dictated a file memorandum noting that he would not respond to Münske’s letter, since he had discussed the matter with him on May 28. The memo included evidence showing the Nazis as a group to be responsible for breaking up the Schücking meeting.

The Schücking affair was a marker in the advance of the Nazi assault on liberalism, internationalism and academic freedom of speech. It was a precursor to the Baumgarten affair five months later, when Nazi students disrupted a sermon of the liberal theologian Otto Baumgarten, branding him a pacifist, “Jew-lover” and traitor to the nation. In response, Rektor Höber expelled the students involved and permanently banned the National Socialist German Student Group from the University campus. This action was one of the factors held against Höber when the Nazis took control of the country in 1933, leading to his expulsion from the faculty and emigration to the United States.

More stories about the Hoeber family are to be found in Against Time: Letters from Nazi Germany, 1938-1939, published by the American Philosophical Society. Information is available here. Also available at Amazon.com

Robert Kempner was my parents’ friend and, like them, a Social Democrat and activist against the Nazi Party before 1933. Like them, he fled Germany for America before World War II. At the end of the War the U.S. government recruited Kempner, a lawyer, to be one of the lead prosecutors at the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg. The fact that he was bilingual made Kempner particularly effective in cross examining the Nazi leadership. He also was a witness against Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1960.

Robert M. W. Kempner when he was a prosecutor at the International War Crimes Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1946.

While my parents were able to escape Germany before the War, my mother’s mother and three brothers were trapped there for the duration. After the war, communications between Americans and German nationals continued to be restricted for many months. Desperate for news about her family, and unable to communicate through civilian channels, my mother wrote to Robert Kempner in Nuremberg asking him to find out if they were alright. As a prosecutor, he had access to the American military mail system, and wrote my parents an extraordinary postcard in response. The original is preserved in my family’s papers.

Postcard from Nuremberg Prosecutor Robert M. W. Kempner to Johannes and Elfriede Hoeber, December 26, 1945.

The first surprising thing is that Kempner used a Nazi-era card with an Adolf Hitler postage stamp. There is great irony in the inscription on the lower left: The Führer knows only war, work and care. We want to take whatever part [of that burden] off him that we can. By the time this postcard was written, the Führer’s cares were long over, since he had killed himself more than six months earlier when the Nazis were crushed by the Allies.

The trial of Major War Criminals had begun on November 20, 1945 and would continue until the end of the next year. There was evidently a Christmas recess in the proceedings, since Kempner writes that he was on a vacation trip (!) to places like Heidelberg and Mannheim where he and my parents had been associated in anti-Nazi activities years earlier. Note, by the way, that Kempner wrote in English, even though his and my parents’ first language was German. American military censors would probably not have allowed letters through if they were written in a language other than English.

Reverse of Postcard from Robert Kempner to Johannes and Elfriede Hoeber, December 26, 1945.

Kempner did not respond directly to my mother’s questions about her family (he probably wasn’t able to contact them) but he responded to reports of widespread starvation and freezing conditions in the war-devastated country. This was probably my mother’s biggest concern and Kempner wrote, “The Germ.[an] situation is not to [sic] bad, they need more fat and meat but they have enough bread and also enough coal for [heating] 1-2 rooms.” Overall, though, Kempner shows little sympathy for the suffering of the Germans, far too many of whom denied any involvement in the nation’s atrocities. Here is the full text of the postcard:

Dec 26

Dear Elfriede and Jonny:

It was very nice of Elfriede to write me. Thanks for the letter. At present I am travelling (5-6 days) for vacation, visiting Heidelberg, Mannheim, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt.

The Germ. situation is not to[o] bad, they need more fat and meat but have enough bread and also coal for 1-2 rooms. Of course, they don’t like the de-nazification program. You know they all ‘had’ to join the Party, were helpful to Jews, if not having a Jewish grandmother, or at least participants of July 20, 1944, which was, if all the allegations of participation were true, a mass movement of the first rank. The Communist vote will be pretty low because of the happenings in the Russian area where fraternization without giving cigarettes is called rape. There are a lot of openings for Elfr. & Jonny but I think we better stay around Philadelphia Pa. Hope you will write me again.

Yours,

Robert MWK

“July 20, 1944” refers a failed attempt by eight military officers to assassinate Hitler. After the war, totally unrealistic numbers of German claimed to have supported it.

The comment about the Russians is unclear, but it was well known that the occupying Soviet Army committed massive rapes of German women, including elderly women and young girls.

Kempner’s comments about “lots of openings” refers to the fact that, as exiled Germans committed to democracy, my parents would have opportunities in a new government to be installed by the Allies — but Kempner didn’t recommend it. In any event, my parents never considered returning to the country from which they had been driven out.

It was an idiosyncrasy of Kempner’s that he addressed my father as “John” or “Jonny.” My father was adamant about not Anglicizing his name, which was Johannes. During his lifetime Robert Kempner was the only one with the temerity to address him as John.

Years later, Robert Kempner successfully sued the German government for restitution on behalf of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of victims of the Nazis, primarily in Israel and America. My parents were among the clients for whom he secured some compensation from the German authorities for the losses they had suffered.

More stories about the Hoeber family are to be found in Against Time: Letters from Nazi Germany, 1938-1939, published by the American Philosophical Society. Information is available here. Also available at Amazon.com

To all of you who are readers of this website, and who mean so much to me:

I am pleased to let you know that my book, Against Time: Letters from Nazi Germany, 1938-1939, about my parents’ flight from Germany to America just before World War II, will be published by the American Philosophical Society Press on September 1, 2015.

You are invited to join me for a reading and reception at the historic building of the American Philosophical Society adjacent to Independence Hall at 104 South 5th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, September 9, 2015 at 5:30 P.M.

In a nutshell, here’s the story of Against Time: My father, Johannes Höber, left Nazi Germany for America in November 1938. My mother, Elfriede, and my nine year old sister, Susanne, were unable to leave until nearly a year later. Fifty years later, I found an old folder containing the long letters Johannes and Elfriede exchanged during the anxious months they were separated. In these letters, Elfriede describes the worsening situation in daily life under Hitler’s regime and Johannes describes his rapid entry into American political life in Philadelphia. Against Time collects those letters with an introduction, notes and an epilogue that set the letters in the context of their time. Johannes and Elfriede were both political scientists and activist Social Democrats, so their letters are of more than just personal interest. Together, the letters tell the intense story of a remarkable couple in one of the most tumultuous periods in world history. You can learn more about the book and read excerpts and view the illustrations at www.againsttimebook.com .

Against Time: Letters from Nazi Germany, 1938-1939 is available for ordering at a pre-publication discount from the American Philosophical Society Press by clicking here . Copies are set to be shipped on September 1.

Speculation: this Arminius “Pirkert” .32 caliber revolver, Germany, 1920s, might have been the kind of gun my father bought before the Nazis took over Germany in 1933.

When the Nazis took control of the city of Mannheim in March 1933, they arrested the top Social Democratic leaders in the city government, including my father, Johannes Höber. They kept him in what they called “protective custody” for five weeks, as previously narrated on this website here. In the months before the takeover, Johannes had been involved in the militia arm of the pro-democracy coalition Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold. I previously wrote about that anti-Nazi paramilitary force here. As part of his involvement in the activities of the Reichsbanner, Johannes bought a pistol that he took on forays with other Social Democrats to disrupt Nazi meetings. My father was a little guy and descended from a well-to-do family of serious intellectuals and scientists. He never seemed to me the kind of man who would engage in this kind of reckless activity, but my mother’s head-shaking bewilderment when she told me about it made it clear the story was true.

Johannes Höber with his daughter, Susanne, around the time he bought his pistol. In this picture he doesn’t look much like a candidate for an armed anti-Nazi militia.

My mother, Elfriede Höber, was a committed pacifist and disapproved of my father’s heroics with the Reichsbanner and especially disliked his keeping a gun in the house. Even decades later, in America, there was a notable tension between them on the one or two occasions when the story came up.

Elfriede Höber around the time the Nazis arrested Johannes.

When Johannes was jailed by the Nazis, Elfriede was left at home alone with their little girl, Susanne, then 3. The pistol was hidden in a stack of bed sheets in the linen closet of their apartment. In the early days of the new regime, no one knew what to expect of the Nazis, but Elfriede feared they might come and search the house for contraband after Johannes’ arrest. Terrified that the Nazis would consider the gun proof that Johannes was an enemy of the regime, Elfriede decided she must get rid of it. But how? The solution that came to her was the bridge across the Rhine River, which had been rebuilt and dedicated in a ceremony just a few months earlier.

The bridge over the Rhine at Mannheim around 1934. Elfriede probably used the walkway at the far right to carry Johannes’ pistol onto the bridge.

To support her, Elfriede asked her best friend, Marianne Daniels, to go with her to get rid of Johannes’ gun. The two young women retrieved the pistol from its hiding place in the linen closet and placed it in a plain paper bag. At night, the two walked out into the dark city, anxious that they might be stopped by a roving squad of storm troopers. After walking for half an hour along the bank of the Rhine, however, they reached the dark bridge unmolested. Hearts pounding, they walked out to the middle of the span and dropped the bag with the gun over the railing. It disappeared into the black waters of the Rhine. For the moment, that peril was out of the picture.

Postscript: Readers of this blog may remember that my dear friend Achim in Dresden has shown astonishing skill in recovering rare items related to my family’s history. This year Achim found an extremely rare copy of the program from the ceremony on November 19, 1932 dedicating the newly reconstructed bridge at Mannheim, where Elfriede later got rid of the pistol. The program book was produced by the Press Office of the City of Mannheim, which Johannes headed at the time.

Program for the dedication of the new bridge across the Rhine at Mannheim, November 19, 1932.

The train station in Basel, Switzerland as it appeared some years before Johannes Höber arrived there from Nazi Germany.

Germany was in an uproar on Saturday, November 12, 1938. The nation was reeling from the events of November 9-10, events that Americans know as Kristallnacht, the Nazis’ broadest attack on the country’s Jews up to that time. During the night, storm troopers attacked and destroyed tens of thousands of Jewish homes and businesses. Thousands of Jews were “arrested” without charges and placed in prison camps. Most of the synagogues in Germany were burned in that one night. My parents, Johannes and Elfriede Höber, spent most of the night seeking out their Jewish friends and helping where they could. My father’s account of that night has already been published here in a prior post.

Weeks before Kristallnacht, Johannes and Elfriede had already decided that Hitler’s Germany had become intolerable and that they would leave if they could. Life was becoming increasingly dangerous for them. Years earlier, the Nazis had imprisoned Johannes because of his Social Democratic politics and more recently the Gestapo had interrogated him about his socialist friends. In addition, his mother’s parents were Jewish, exposing him to additional danger. Johannes and Elfriede’s original plan was for Johannes to leave in late November with Elfriede and their daughter Susanne to follow later. The events of Kristallnacht, however, caused them to change their plans and for him to leave immediately.

Johannes and Elfriede Höber on a road outside Düsseldorf, Germany, where they lived for several years before they fled to America. (He’s wearing knickers and long stockings under that coat.)

On Saturday morning, November 12, carrying a single suitcase, Johannes boarded a train in Düsseldorf and headed for Switzerland. He avoided talking to anyone during the nine-hour train trip, and approached the German-Swiss border toward evening. The station just inside the border, the Basel Badischer Bahnhof, has a peculiar status. Although the station is several miles inside Switzerland, a 19th century treaty provides that the tracks and arrival platforms are legally German territory. The train platforms are connected to the station by an underground pedestrian tunnel, and the German-Swiss border is in the tunnel.

The German passport that Johannes Höber used to cross the border from Germany into Switzerland on November 12, 1938.

Years later, Johannes described his arrival at the station and his fear as he approached the German exit checkpoint. Would he be stopped? Would the Gestapo be looking for him after they interrogated him the previous day? Would the border authorities check whether he had paid the emigration tax? Might someone have informed the border authorities about his past activities as a Social Democrat or about his Jewish grandparents? Would he be arrested as so many were on Kristallnacht two days earlier? With his anxiety built up, it almost seemed like a trick when he was allowed to pass through the German exit control without a single question. But the Swiss passport control was some 50 meters away at the opposite end of the tunnel – a kind of no man’s land separated the checkpoints. Carrying his suitcase, with his head up but with his heart pounding, he walked straight ahead, trying to look confident. Johannes told his children years later that those 50 meters were the longest walk of his life. To his immense relief, he quickly swept through the second checkpoint, out of Nazi Germany and into the security of Switzerland. He got away from the Badischer Bahnhof as quickly as he could, and took a fifteen minute tram ride to the Schweizer Bahnhof, the station for Swiss trains. There he got the train to Zürich. He was free.

The lapel pin pictured above was worn by those who supported democracy and representative government in Germany before 1933.

With the defeat of Kaiser Wilhelm’s forces at the end of World War I in 1918, Germany became a parliamentary democracy for the first time. Not everyone supported the Weimar Republic, however, which was subject to continuous attacks from both the left and the right. In 1923, there were two failed coups, one on the left by the Communists in Hamburg and another by the Nazis on the right in the attempted Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. In response to these attacks, the Social Democrats and centrist parties formed a non-partisan organization devoted to protecting the Republic. They called the organization Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold , or Black, Red and Gold National Flag, the colors of the flag of the democratic Republic. There was a civilian political wing of the Reichsbanner as well as a paramilitary wing. The latter was able to provide resistance to the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet) of the aristocrats and military, the Sturmabteilung (SA or Stormtroopers) of the National Socialists and the Rotfrontkämpferbund (Red Front Fighters Brigade) of the Communist Party.

Both my grandfather Rudolf Höber , a Liberal, and my father Johannes, a Social Democrat, became members of the Reichsbanner. They undoubtedly wore the pin of the organization, publicly declaring their support for democracy and against dictatorship. My father later became a member of the paramilitary wing and was more than once involved in violent conflicts with Nazis in the months before they took over the government.

After the Nazis were given control of Germany in January 1933, the Reichsbanner was quickly suppressed and past membership became a basis for persecution. My grandfather’s membership in the Reichsbanner was one reason cited by the Nazis in expelling him from his position as Professor of Physiology at the University of Kiel. My father was dismissed from his job in the government of the city of Mannheim and arrested. With experiences like these, all evidence of the Reichsbanner quickly vanished. Although there had been hundreds of thousands of members in 1931 and 1932, anyone associated with the organization quickly divested themselves of any evidence of their membership, including their membership pins. As a result, the pins, these symbols of freedom and democracy, nearly disappeared.

But I have one. My Dresden friend Achim, who has appeared in these posts several times, is a researcher and archivist of exceptional skill. He recently found one of the few surviving Reichsbanner pins, 80 years after the organization was crushed by the Nazis. Knowing that I would value this memento more than almost anyone, Achim sent it to me for Christmas. It is a rare gift in every sense.